Traditional patent review processes within large companies initially requires an inventor to mail a paper copy of an invention disclosure to the intellectual property (IP) department. Upon receipt of the invention disclosure, an IP administrator assigns a disclosure number and forwards a copy of the invention disclosure to an evaluation committee. Members of the evaluation committee vary depending on the technical or functional subject matter of the invention. A recommendation by the evaluation committee is then mailed back to the IP administrator.
The recommendation typically includes one of the following: perform a patent search, publish, close, or protect as a trade secret. As an alternative, the recommendation can bypass the patent search and go directly into a recommendation of preparing and filing of a patent application.
The above described process is labor intensive. That is, all correspondence between the inventors, the intellectual property department, the evaluators, and other necessary parties are self initiated. Since the primary coordinator for the invention disclosure process is typically the IP administrator, much of the effort in distributing this information is placed upon this person. The IP administrator must assign the disclosure number, send out notification letters to applicable individuals that an invention disclosure has been submitted, and track the entire overall process from start to finish, which can be a time consuming task.
Attempts have been made to automate an invention disclosure process. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,377,355 to Hager et al. discloses an automation of procedures in a local area network (LAN) environment. The procedures are automated in a data processing system with regard to the disclosures stored therein. Another example of automating the invention disclosure process in a local area network (LAN) environment is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,869 to Forrest et al. A selective review and electronic corroboration of invention disclosures within a distributed data processing system are disclosed.
Yet another method of an automated invention disclosure process is a program that operates on a mainframe computer. The program includes a set of virtual machine programs that operate on the mainframe for automating the invention disclosure process. These programs include a first program for inventors, a second program for the intellectual property department, and a third program for the review committees. The first program allows inventors to create invention disclosures on-line and submit the disclosure to the intellectual property department. The second program automatically assigns the next disclosure number, assigns a functional area and attorney, and sends the information disclosure to a predetermined list of committee members. The third program allows review committee members to view and print the invention disclosure. After the committee members have read the invention disclosure, members vote on the disclosure and the third program sends an electronic ballot to the chairperson of the committee.
Unfortunately, this program is cumbersome and difficult to follow. All text to be included in the invention disclosure must be entered directly into the system. Moreover, entry of text requires the user to know a prescribed set of coded instructions, which is not user friendly for someone unfamiliar with the instruction codes. Furthermore, a charge is incurred to the program or functional area based upon the input/output usage initiated by the user in that particular area.
Despite the development of these invention disclosure processes, there is still a need for a user friendly invention disclosure process that automatically distributes electronic documents within a data processing system.